Geocaching in the hills

May I just say that smoke would not be on the typical "Wanna See" list while out hiking in the (dry) hills. Would that be a safe assumption? Ok, well, there I was this afternoon hiking in some nearby hills looking for geocaches. I found two while gaining elevation on my way up to a hidden lake. I had never seen this lake, actually just a small reservoir, so I thought I would head up and take a peek.

While I was looking at the lake, and the surrounding community, I suddenly smelled smoke. No, not a bbq, but smoke. The burning grass kind of smoke. This sudden bit of information was not pleasing unto me, being quite a ways from an escape out of those hills. I figured if worse came to worse, at least I had a lake to jump into, never mind all the algae floating on top.

I walked down just a bit from my location on top of the hill and looked at the situation. Hmm, that smoke was rising from the blind side of another hill and it was quite some distance from me. My escape route would be downhill all the way so I could run it and get out. That's what I decided to do. Heck, I don't like walking down hills anyway but prefer to jog if I can. In this case I just picked up the pace more than usual.

Once I got to the bottom of the hill and was about to turn out toward the community of houses, I noticed that the smoke I had seen earlier had lightened up considerably. Well, I'll be! It would have been a shame to split out of there when there was still another cache to be found less than a quarter mile away. Priorities changed...I found a third cache for the day and then I split. There was still a little bit of smoke rising but it was nothing like before and from my new vantage point I could see a fire fighting crew from the nearby forestry station on hand. All was well.